In a packet-switched wireless network based on Fifth Generation (5G) New Radio (NR) protocols or other similar protocols, the initial access between a user equipment (UE) and a base station (e.g., next generation nodeB or gNB) is facilitated by the base station's transmission of a Synchronization Signal Block (SSB) that represents two physical signals: a Primary Synchronization Signal (PSS) and a Secondary Synchronization Signal (SSS); as well as one physical channel: the Physical Broadcast Channel (PBCH). The PBCH carries a Master Information Block (MIB), which represents the minimum parameters necessary for the UE to wirelessly connect to the base station.
In many implementations, the base station may use an antenna array to facilitate beamformed transmission of the synchronization signaling such that the base station sweeps its corresponding cell volume with multiple beams of the synchronization signaling directed in different spatial directions in a time-multiplexed manner. In this approach, the base station periodically transmits an SSB burst set composed of one or more SSB bursts. Each SSB burst includes an SSB for each beam employed by the base station, and whereby each SSB within an SSB burst is identified by an index value, referred to as an SSB index, that represents the position of the SSB within the SSB burst. The SSB index for a given SSB within the SSB burst is used to generate the SSB itself, including its use in encoding the DeModulation Reference Signal (DMRS) used as a reference signal for decoding a Physical Broadcast Channel (PBCH) of the SSB.
However, while the SSB index of an SSB is needed to process the SSB itself, an SSB does not explicitly identify its associated SSB index. As such, the UE conventionally is required to determine the SSB index by iterating through all possible values of the SSB index during end-to-end decoding of the PBCH of a received SSB and then identifying the SSB index of the SSB as the particular SSB index value that provided the correct decoding result. This brute-force approach often unnecessarily consumes excessive computing resources and bandwidth.